Now if this was the London Borough of Camden it would be easy - their website lets you enter a postcode and it tells you the exact parking restrictions in every street! This being Southwark, that's not possible. I guess the only thing you can do is have a scout around and look at parking restrictions etc. How about buying a book of residents parking visitor permits?

(Apparently, because of some reason neither I nor the lady at the Parking Shop knew about, one can't buy visitors' passes/temporary passes in the area where we live.)

Mapmaker,

I rang the P Shop, and they said that one could get monthly visitor permits (£10 per month) and that to do that one would need: (1) proof of your own residence status - they said a utility bill would do; (2) a letter from you, saying that friend X, with license number ZZZ123 would be visiting from ........to....... and that you could then get a temp permit.

You might want to check that the info she gave me also applies to your area of SE1

Ivanhoe I enquired of southwark sometime ago about book of visitor parking permits as like you I am in one of a few areas that they are not available. I think that was because we are in one of the original controled parking areas. They were going to introduce visitors parking permits for us in August 2003 (if i remember right) but what ever the date was it has well and truely past but nothing happened. Seems unfair that we are not allowed visitors who drive.